(ANSA) – TUNIS, JUNE 10 – “Tunisia will never accept the slightest inhumane treatment inflicted on anyone on its soil and works to ensure that all immigrants are in a regular situation”. Tunisian President Kais Saied said this at the headquarters of the governorate of Sfax, a transit hub for sub-Saharan migrants, where he made a surprise visit today.
“These people are victims of a global system that treats them not as human beings, but as mere numbers and it is not acceptable that we act as border guards for other countries,” Saied said, as reported in a presidency video taken by Mosaic FM.
“The solution must be collective and within the framework of the law – said Saied – this situation that Tunisia is going through is abnormal and we must put an end to this inhumane situation”. Even the statistics are false, he said, there is talk of 10,000, but in reality they are much more numerous, and they go above all to Sfax. Do human rights defenders accept that people are in this misery, sleeping on the ground and outside with their children in the sun, cold and rain? asked the president. Saïed, who visited migrants on the outskirts of Bab Jebli where they set up a makeshift camp. Adding that Tunisia can teach lessons of humanity.
“We talk about trafficking in human beings and they are victims of poverty, civil wars and take refuge in Tunisia, but we are a state that has its own laws and respects the law and human beings. The situation must be within the law, why are we asking to respect the law in the north of the Mediterranean and not in the south? The solution must not be to the detriment of Tunisia, of those we protect, but (migrants ed) must respect the law and be within the law”, he added . (HANDLE).
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